Why are we militarising Space?

By Michael Williss

The Australian Defence Force (ADF) released its 2026 Defence Strategy earlier this year, and an accompanying fact sheet said that “The ADF must be integrated across all five domains – maritime, land, air, space and cyber – as well as with international partners.”[1]

The reference to the “five domains” is important. Prior to 2020, there was only reference to the traditional warfare domains of the land, seas and air. As of January 2022, however, a new command force operating across the three traditional domains was created, now known as Space Command.[2]

The official embrace of Space as a war-fighting domain runs counter to the spirit, if not the letter, of two international Treaties signed by Australia: the UN Outer Space Treaty (OST) and the Moon Treaty.

The OST was a response by the world community to US and Soviet nuclear weapons tests in Space from 1958 to 1962. The largest US test occurred 400kms above and 1450kms south-west of Hawaii. It was 90 times the size of the blast at Hiroshima. It caused significant electrical damage in Hawaii, but also resulted, in the months that followed, in killing eight of the 24 satellites that were then in orbit around the Earth including the UK’s Telstar.[3]

This led to the ratification by UN member states of the OST in 1967. Amongst the provisions of the Treaty were:

• outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States;
• outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means;
• States shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner.

However, there is a very large loophole between a nuclear weapon and a WMD through which any manner of weapons based on new technologies could be fired.

The 1979 Moon Treaty reiterated the points above and strengthened several of them. Australia signed it in 1986, but to date on 17 countries have done so. Opposition to it has been led by the US which refused to accept its restriction on “any military use of celestial bodies.”[4]

Falling in behind the US, Australia signed the Trump Administration’s 2020 Artemis Accords which were designed to nullify the Moon Treaty and give the green light to US-led colonisation of the Moon for the purpose of commercial mining of its surface.

Anywhere that the US dollar treads, the men with guns are there to protect it. As on Earth, so in Space. In 1985, under Ronald Reagan, the US created its Space Command. It lapsed after a while but was recreated under Trump in 2019 with a reemphasized focus on space as a warfighting domain. It established its own fighting force for Space, known as Guardians.

Col. Kyle Pumroy (Ret.) writing in the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies’ paper “Military Human Spaceflight: A Key Component to US Space Superiority,” said “now is the time to begin placing Guardians in space to develop the skills, tools, and concepts to build a future capacity to defend core US interests…”[5]

The US aims to dominate space militarily, and Australia is its willing accomplice.

The latest comments came on August 12 2026 at the US Army Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Alabama.[6]

US Space Command (SPACECOM) head Gen. Stephen Whiting, told attendees that SPACECOM’s top two priorities for fiscal 2029 through to 2033 are “integrated space fires” and capabilities to counter large constellations of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) in order to establish space superiority.

“We’re a combatant command and we fight to win wars. To win, we need credible, acknowledged, kinetic and non-kinetic fires. They are a key component of how we establish space superiority and restore credible deterrence,” he said.

Kinetic refers to the movement of a physical body such as a missile for the purpose of the destruction of an adversary’s material assets; non-kinetic refers to such movement as use of radio waves for jamming an adversary’s communications systems.

Whiting’s deputy, Lt. Gen. Rick Zellmann, on Tuesday told the symposium that the US military now has “policy” approval for three basic types of space fires: ground-to-space fires that “we’ve been doing for years” with “communications jamming systems;” space-to-space attacks known as “orbital warfare;” and, given that the Trump administration plans to build space-based interceptors for the US Golden Dome missile shield, space-to-ground.

Responsibility for ground to space fires is shared with the Army, the Air Force and Marines, but orbital warfare and space to ground fires are the preserve of SPACECOM.

Australian company EOS claimed that Australia is one of just two countries with the capabilities to neutralise large numbers of satellites passing over its territory.[7] EOS spokesperson Dr Ben Greene said Australian Space Domain Awareness (SDA) covered around one sixth of the sky, delivered by, among others, EOS with its laser tracking facility in Canberra, the RAAF’s space telescope in WA and the new US-owned LeoLabs Australia space radar, also in WA. “We could intercept and interdict the satellite operations of any country on earth, if we chose to. That’s a really powerful platform for us,” he said. “It’s quite feasible now to talk about taking out hundreds of satellites a day if that was necessary.”

An ASPI (aka Australian Serving Predatory Imperialism) spokesperson supported EOS’s vision for the military use of Space, saying: “We need a much more ambitious approach to how we think about defence and space. It can’t just be for communications provision. It’s got to be about space control. It’s got to be how we respond to a contested space domain when China is rapidly developing counter-space capabilities and fully intends to use them in the next war. Space will quickly become a warfighting environment, not because of our own actions but because of decisions in Beijing.”

No doubt Russia and China are developing military space technologies similar to those of the US. But we are not their appendages in the same way as we are in relation to the US.

We must do what we can to stop the militarisation of Space, including support for or participation in US space war plans.

Australia must call for the strengthening of the OST to include all weapons in Space, and for the banning of Earth to Space, Space to Space, and Space to Earth military activity.

Australia must join those nations that have pledged to a no first use (NFU) policy on placing weapons in Space and call on the US, Russia and China to do the same.

Australia must ensure any developments in Space are done for purposes other than “colonization” by any state or nation on earth. The exploration and use of Space for peaceful cooperation among nations should be our goal.

That is the only way we can contribute to humanity and not be a burden on it.

[1] 2026 National Defence Strategy Factsheet

[2] Space Command (Australia) – Wikipedia

[3] The Space Review: Remembering Starfish Prime

[4] Moon Treaty – Wikipedia

[5] Guardians_in_Space_Policy_Paper_65-Final.pdf

[6] Joint force needs kinetic and non-kinetic weapons for space war: Whiting – Breaking Defense

[7] Leveraging the space domain – Electro Optic Systems